Police destroy $200k cannabis field and grow house in Rio Claro

Po­lice de­stroyed an es­ti­mat­ed TT$200,000 worth of cannabis plants and dis­man­tled a cannabis grow­house dur­ing an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion in the Rio Claro for­est on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers up­root­ed and de­stroyed 360 cannabis plants dur­ing the in­tel­li­gence-led ex­er­cise, which formed part of Op­er­a­tion R.E.S.O.L.U.T.E.

The op­er­a­tion was con­duct­ed be­tween 5:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. by of­fi­cers of the Jun­gle Op­er­a­tions Team, Air Sup­port Unit, East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and East­ern Di­vi­sion Gang In­tel­li­gence Unit.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers trekked ap­prox­i­mate­ly one kilo­me­tre in­to the Rio Claro for­est, where they dis­cov­ered a cannabis field and a grow­house oc­cu­py­ing rough­ly half a lot of land.

The grow­house was out­fit­ted with so­lar-pow­ered light­ing, wa­ter tanks, bar­rels, a stor­age con­tain­er and dry­ing racks, in­di­cat­ing what po­lice de­scribed as a well-es­tab­lished cul­ti­va­tion op­er­a­tion.

The struc­ture was es­ti­mat­ed to be worth TT$10,000.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers de­stroyed 200 ful­ly grown cannabis plants and 160 cannabis seedlings. Po­lice es­ti­mat­ed the street val­ue of the plants at ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$200,000.

The grow­house was al­so dis­man­tled and de­stroyed.

No ar­rests were re­port­ed in con­nec­tion with the op­er­a­tion, and po­lice did not in­di­cate whether any sus­pects were seen in the area or whether in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

The TTPS said the ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Tee­warie, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ed­wards, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Eti­enne, Su­per­in­ten­dent Be­har­ry, As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Rus­sell and As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Lee Tang.

The op­er­a­tion was spear­head­ed by In­spec­tor Kistow and In­spec­tor Harp­er and su­per­vised by Sergeant Lee and Cor­po­ral See­lals­ingh.

The lat­est dis­cov­ery forms part of on­go­ing ef­forts by the TTPS to dis­rupt the cul­ti­va­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of il­le­gal nar­cotics through in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions across the coun­try.

Po­lice have con­tin­ued to tar­get re­mote forest­ed ar­eas where il­le­gal cannabis fields are of­ten es­tab­lished, us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of ground teams and aer­i­al sup­port to lo­cate and de­stroy cul­ti­va­tion sites be­fore the drugs reach the il­lic­it mar­ket.